Why You're Parasocially Obsessed With Podcasters

In the digital age, the people we feel closest to sometimes don’t even know we exist. This week, host Amanda Montell (@amanda_montell) is joined by Jessica Zier and Lizzie Li, PhD students at Northwestern University who study parasocial relationships, to spiral about the emotional life of one-sided intimacy. Together, they explore how digital closeness blurs the line between connection and projection, and why it makes perfect sense that we feel so seen by people who’ve never met us. A soft spiral into loneliness, identity, and the very human instinct to reach for connection, even through a screen.

🎙 Magical Overthinkers Podcast 🎙

Are you an overthinker? Prone to thought spirals? Do you wonder why, despite living in the "Information Age," life only seems to be making less sense? From extreme celebrity worshippers to people with master’s degrees basing their real-life choices on Mercury’s whereabouts, there seems to be a lot of delulu out there these days. More than ever, in fact. Enter: This relatable, thought-provoking podcast for curious overthinkers. Every other week, tune in as host Amanda Montell, author of the New York Times bestselling book The Age of Magical Overthinking and host of the Sounds Like A Cult podcast, interviews a brilliant expert guest about a buzzy, confounding, anxiety-provoking topic. Think: narcissism, nostalgia, polyamory, social media comparison, "millennial cringe." Complete with heart-on-their-sleeve personal stories, thought-provoking conversations, and actionable takeaways for how chronically online listeners can get out of their own heads, this podcast is here to make some sense of the senseless. To help quiet the cacophony in our brains for a while. Or even hear a melody in it.

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